Social Performance: an ongoing investigation

What is the nature of "performance"? Where does it take place? Who are the performers? If it's funny can it still be academic?

Theater artist and cultural critic Janice Perry interprets jury duty, citizenship, war and other social events using sociologist Erving Goffman's work on everyday performance (and Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Butler, Derrida, Mead, Buber, Douglas
and others) to underpin her humorist's perspective.